Who Will Pick The Strawberries

[Guest TheBlueCat]

Just a guess but probably because the wages haven't changed since you were doing it as a lad?

Funny, but wrong. There wasn't a minimum wage in those days for a start.

[motch]

I don't know how it compares to today's wages, but 23 years ago I worked 18 hour days, 7 days a week on a mixed dairy farm for £100.00 a month and my board and lodging, and all the beer I could drink in about 20 minutes before closing time

If I found myself out of work I would go back to fruit picking, tetty lifting, whatever, for minimum wage provided I could get long hours. I reckon I could feed clothe and house myself. I wouldn't run a car.

I think the other guy was saying/getting at that he'd do that for a 40 hour week or so, not a 126 hour week. thats just nuts man

[Guest TheBlueCat]

My mum was one of many in our village who picked fruit and veg.

Tax credits are messed up by short term work.

Give people nothing and work is much more acceptable.

I guess so. What a stupid system.

[sparko]

Yup if you want to share a caravan with 20 Lithuainians then strawberry picking is for you.

Edited February 15, 2013 by sparko

[cashinmattress]

£6 an hour I think. Many farms offer work piecemeal but if you fail to pick enough you get "topped up" to NMW, but they won't ask you back next week. If you pick more than the target then you'll be earning more than NMW.

It costs a fair bit to travel from Romania to Scotland and back again, so you have to take that into account. Pretty sure the farmer will be getting a big old hunk of that money back by charging them for accommodation while they are there.

One word... Ryanair.

For now it's going to involve connections, but very soon there will be direct flights. O'bleary's cottoned onto this market, nasty cheap kvnt that he is.

Did it very successfully for the Polish wave.

[Gone baby gone]

Funny, but wrong. There wasn't a minimum wage in those days for a start.

Ok, don't leave us in the dark... how much did you get paid per hour then?

[Gone baby gone]

One word... Ryanair.

For now it's going to involve connections, but very soon there will be direct flights. O'bleary's cottoned onto this market, nasty cheap kvnt that he is.

Did it very successfully for the Polish wave.

It's still not going to make you rich if you only get a weeks work 'cos you can't pick fast enough.

You'll also need a tenner (each way) to get the bus from the nearest Ryanair airport to somewhere within walking distance of your work location.

[R K]

No, many places still do that. But I guess when you invite the public in, a certain % of your crop will be damaged by those walking around.

Also, many of the big farms use poly tunnels, and irrigation systems that could be damaged.

Wonder how many families you could house in that cloche?

It has water supply, solar heating, fresh fruit by one's bedside. Probably about £4,000 per acre. Nice modern open plan design.

[motch]

there's a farmer near me who laid off a local guy who's been with them for 10 years or more, but has still kept all the europeans workers on (obviously). Quite a few live in caravans around the back of the farm.

[cashinmattress]

It's still not going to make you rich if you only get a weeks work 'cos you can't pick fast enough.

You'll also need a tenner (each way) to get the bus from the nearest Ryanair airport to somewhere within walking distance of your work location.

Putting up with mass living arrangements in slum (UK) housing, planning out journeys by megabus and ryanair, plus being abused by the locals isn't much of a big deal when you come from a country where the police regularily kill people, children are forced into prostitution, and most of the country is in the pocket of criminal syndicates.

I think you underestimate the willingess of these foreign workers to earn a months wage in a week and have far superior living standards.

[Gone baby gone]

Putting up with mass living arrangements in slum (UK) housing, planning out journeys by megabus and ryanair, plus being abused by the locals isn't much of a big deal when you come from a country where the police regularily kill people, children are forced into prostitution, and most of the country is in the pocket of criminal syndicates.

I think you underestimate the willingess of these foreign workers to earn a months wage in a week and have far superior living standards.

Clearly they are willing - at least once anyway!

[LiveinHope]

I think the other guy was saying/getting at that he'd do that for a 40 hour week or so, not a 126 hour week. thats just nuts man

I was probably exaggerating when I think about it, as the day was interspersed with down time and I was including the whole day from rise to bed as i was on site, You could occasionally be up in the night for a calving though.

There was a lot of eating involved too.

Got up at 05.30 to start the day with a slab of rich fruit cake, out the farmhouse door at 06.00 (morning milking), full English breakfast at 09.30-10.00, back out, backi in for full roast dinner at 13.00-13.30, another cooked meal for tea 17.00-18.00 (back out for evening milking) Ploughman's supper 21-30-22.00, Dash to the pub.

What's that ? more like a 15 hr-ish day.

Today, if it was just me, I'd need to earn a grand a month, I don't know how many hrs that would be on minimum wage ? One of the good things about fruit picking was that you were paid according to your productivity, which always seemed quite fair .

Edited February 15, 2013 by LiveinHope

[RufflesTheGuineaPig]

Why has it suddenly become so hard to find people to pick fruit?

It's not, it hard to find people to pick fruit for less than minimum wage.

[Hail the Tripod]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9872901/Bulgarians-and-Romanians-will-reject-hard-work.html

Strawberry picking was one of the jobs I used to do when I was a teenager and, from what I recall, most of the other pickers were students and schoolkids with a few older people thrown in. It wasn't the best farm work for sure, but it wasn't that bad and certainly beat some of the other stuff on offer. Why has it suddenly become so hard to find people to pick fruit?

Me too. But my rent was £15 a week and petrol was circa 40p/litre. I had 1970 mini that cost £50 and when a bit broke of you could go to a junkyard and get a replacement for £5 tops. Good times.

I don't think you can live like that anymore.

[motch]

I was probably exaggerating when I think about it, as the day was interspersed with down time and I was including the whole day from rise to bed as i was on site, You could occasionally be up in the night for a calving though.

There was a lot of eating involved too.

Got up at 05.30 to start the day with a slab of rich fruit cake, out the farmhouse door at 06.00 (morning milking), full English breakfast at 09.30-10.00, back out, backi in for full roast dinner at 13.00-13.30, another cooked meal for tea 17.00-18.00 (back out for evening milking) Ploughman's supper 21-30-22.00, Dash to the pub.

What's that ? more like a 15 hr-ish day.

Today, if it was just me, I'd need to earn a grand a month, I don't know how many hrs that would be on minimum wage ? One of the good things about fruit picking was that you were paid according to your productivity, which always seemed quite fair .

sounds a lot more feasable, must of been knackering doing that though, although if it's something you really like doing and enjoy it's not to bad for a while. I used to go out with a woman who worked as head stable girl, not as many hours as that but she had a house and heat supplied for free plus all bills paid for etc. wage was shit but taking the accomodation into account not too bad. was a few years back so probably all done by the eastern europeans now in caravans and house probably rented out for £700 pm or so instead.

[motch]

double post oops

Edited February 15, 2013 by motch

[Gone baby gone]

Me too. But my rent was £15 a week and petrol was circa 40p/litre. I had 1970 mini that cost £50 and when a bit broke of you could go to a junkyard and get a replacement for £5 tops. Good times.

I don't think you can live like that anymore.

£2 an hour in 1980 = £7.26 in 2012.

Inflation - it makes us all feel rich

I was getting well above NMW stacking shelves in a local supermarket aged 17 back in 1989. And in those days you got a proper 40 hour week and as much overtime as you could handle. No zero hour contracts and being undermined by someone on workfare!

[R K]

Putting up with mass living arrangements in slum (UK) housing, planning out journeys by megabus and ryanair, plus being abused by the locals isn't much of a big deal when you come from a country where the police regularily kill people, children are forced into prostitution, and most of the country is in the pocket of criminal syndicates.

I think you underestimate the willingess of these foreign workers to earn a months wage in a week and have far superior living standards.

England?

[Self Employed Youth]

It costs a fair bit to travel from Romania to Scotland and back again,

Bet it is cheaper than a train from Yorkshire to Scotland.

[pl1]

Just a guess but probably because the wages haven't changed since you were doing it as a lad?

I live in an area surrounded by soft fruit farms and they have huge portacabin "villages" used to house the eastern europeans they get in to do the picking. The workers walk a few miles down the 60mph country roads (with no footpaths) so they can shop in the local town. There's always the odd accident and there is now pressure on the council to install a footpath.

It's all a bit Grapes of Wrath.

For them it's a Kings Ransom for everyone else it doesn't even pay the rent.

edit to add: A flippant comment by Alan Johnson a couple of weeks ago about this topic on QT when he said "I think what we would do in future is control immigration from countries where the GDP's per capita are very different".

A good idea Alan, but about a decade too late!

Edited February 15, 2013 by pl1

[Jolly Roger]

Living and transport costs are too high, surely.

I saw some TV footage fairly recently showing a picking machine in a greenhouse which suspended the pickers above the fruit in slings and advanced at a slow pace, allowing the workers to hover over the fruit and pick from underneath them. Quite clever really, and there have to be worse and definitely less important jobs.

[wonderpup]

Funny how the way to motivate the rich is by reducing taxes to give them more- while the way to motivate the poor is to reduce their benefits to give them less.

All of these threads about low paid work have the same subtext- we need people to work for bare subsidence wages and the so they must be starved into it.

The downside being that in order to achieve this we would need to replicate the entire Dickensian landscape of poverty and starvation to provide the correct 'incentives'. And even the Bullingdon boys don't want their fingerprints at that particular crime scene- at least not yet.

[Lewis Gordon Pugh]

I don't know how it compares to today's wages, but 23 years ago I worked 18 hour days, 7 days a week on a mixed dairy farm for £100.00 a month and my board and lodging, and all the beer I could drink in about 20 minutes before closing time

If I found myself out of work I would go back to fruit picking, tetty lifting, whatever, for minimum wage provided I could get long hours. I reckon I could feed clothe and house myself. I wouldn't run a car.

Go on then a challenge you to do the calculations I bet you couldn't feed clothe and house yourself picking potatoes.

[Guest TheBlueCat]

Ok, don't leave us in the dark... how much did you get paid per hour then?

OK, a long time ago, but I it was actually piece work and I made around 1 pound per hour. Adjusted for inflation I think that's probably a little less than minimum wage now.

[Self Employed Youth]

I've worked along with our British and Easter European brothers in the food industry in a sausage factory & warehouse complex owned by VION (Was closed a few years back and the jobs transferred to Scotland to a larger production plant). There were many chains of employment. Permanent workers were employed by VION, but others were employed through agencies and chains of agencies. The people dishing out the work were bilingual, low paid themselves and possessed a gangmaster license. All the profits were being made higher up.

The larger plant in Scotland with 1700 staff is now to close, I think it just has done. A Polish friend was over the moon to become unemployed.

The smaller factory I worked in though, with 200 staff, was always profitable. Just not profitable enough.

It was capable of doubling wages, supplying the local market AND bringing consumer prices down, and it could have done so, and still made a NET PROFIT!

As food price rise, the amount of profit it could generate increases further. But it cannot compete, for it no longer exists. Small factories like this one have been bought out, closed down, jobs transferred to larger plant and monopolies have been formed. Some of these monopolies need not have a land base in the countries they operate. Even the agricultural ones!

At the same time, people are banned from growing food for sale upon their allotments. Growing food for sale on an allotment is illegal.

And there is little incentive for a large landholder to sell their landholdings to small farmers, for they receive agricultural subsidy in the form of CAP payments even if they leave 'their'/'the' land idle.

We have the absurd situation where tenanted farms that are more productive than owner occupied farms are going out of business. Whilst owner occupied farms of low productivity stay in business and take on staff paid by the state via apprenticeships and the likes.